(The Pinocchio in the Planter)

I don't own Bones.

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As a rule, Booth tried not to let the cases he worked on affect him, but sometimes the things he had to deal with during his investigations found a way to intrude into his life.

While they were investigating Christopher Pelant's death, he got a warrant to search the victim's house and what he found there was more than a little disturbing.

After he and Agent Harris entered Pelant's house, Harris decided to search the bedrooms while Booth searched Pelant's desk in the living room. Harris was hoping that Pelant had been killed in the house so they could at least pinpoint where the crime scene was. "If Pelant was killed here, we should find some evidence of that pretty quickly."

While Harris was busy searching in the bedrooms, Booth rummaged in the desk drawers and examined the papers he found there. Apparently Pelant had money to pay his bills even though he was unemployed and that made Booth curious. He knew the man had been a hacker and had boasted that he'd hacked bank accounts belonging to companies that profited from doing business with the Defense Department so he knew he'd have to get Angela to look into that for him.

"Booth, I need you to come back here." Since Harris sounded urgent, Booth decided to find out what Harris was upset about. Moving down the hallway, Booth noticed the agent standing just inside of the back bedroom and wondered what the hurry was about. "Yeah, what's up? Was Pelant killed here?"

Moving further into the room, Harris glanced at the wall next to the door and shook his head. "Just come in and look. It's self-explanatory."

Curious, Booth entered the room and turned to stare at the wall Harris was pointing at. "Shit!" The wall was covered with newspaper clippings, pieces of maps, post it notes and pictures. The pictures were spread out on the wall, taped next to newspaper clippings and some of them seemed to be of his partner. "The man was under house arrest . . . how the hell was he taking pictures of Bones at crime scenes if he couldn't leave this house?"

Studying the newspaper clippings, Harris shook his head. "I don't know, but some of these clippings are about murders committed in other states, not just in The District." As he moved along the wall, he found some of the newspaper articles covered the murder of the former CEO of Transtech. "This case is still unsolved." There was a picture of Jeremiah Waverly's house, his car and one of Waverly swimming in a pool. "The man was found dead in his swimming pool, well bits of him were. No one could figure out what the murder weapon was, but whatever it was, it destroyed Waverly's body. You know, his company furnishes armored vehicles for the Army and that may have made him a target . . . Agent Holtz found out that there were complaints that Transtech's vehicles weren't what they were supposed to be and some of our troops were killed when using them. It's possible Waverly might have been killed by someone who was unhappy with that situation. Holtz said that the Department of Defense had put a hold on buying any more stuff from Transtech and Waverly was threatening to sue the DOD . . . Holtz interviewed everyone that sent hate male to Waverly, his business contacts and a couple of business rivals but unfortunately, he hasn't found any clues to point towards who did it." Pulling a Post-it note from the wall, he noticed some times listed and one was circled. "We think Waverly was killed in the early evening and this note has a circled 7 p.m. on it . . . Since Pelant was an anti military activist maybe he killed Waverly. He was under house arrest so no one would have ever suspected him of killing Waverly or anyone else."

"I'll let Holtz know about what you found. This might be the break he's been looking for." More concerned about the newspaper stories about cases he and Brennan had worked on Booth felt that Pelant had been planning something and it couldn't have been good. "He seemed to be obsessed with Bones."

"Well, whatever he was planning, he can't do it now." Harris was a realist. "I need to get the tech guys out here and take pictures of everything. We need an inventory of everything in this house . . . and just to let you know, I found his ankle monitor that he was supposed to be wearing, it's in the other bedroom. It's on a worktable. It's not damaged and it wasn't cut off so I'd say the company that was supposed to be monitoring Pelant may be in big trouble or they should be."

Booth agreed. "It looks like Pelant came and went as he liked. It doesn't look like the man was killed in this house, so we still don't know where the original crime scene was."

Rubbing his chin, Harris nodded his head. "I'm not sure where to look, but I plan to look over everything he had on this wall . . . Oh, I found a bunch of electronic junk in the closet in the other bedroom . . . Pelant wasn't supposed to have a computer in this house, but he does have an old one in that room and it looks like he was working on something on the table, I'm just not sure what it was."

Staring at one of the pictures of Brennan, Booth felt a cold chill run down his back. "This picture was taken at a book signing Bones did last month . . . I don't know why he was interested in Bones and this wall of death thing makes me think he might have decided to go after her. I need to know why."

"Maybe because he was killing people and he was worried that Dr. Brennan would eventually be assigned one of his victims . . . The man was a genius and he had to know that Dr. B is too."

"Maybe." Booth studied the newspaper clippings and pointed at one of the newspaper clippings near the window. "This newspaper clipping is about the murder of the Gravedigger . . . There's a sheet of paper listing some names and cities next to the names. Bones, Hodgins and my name are on this list and I recognize two other names, the Kent boys . . . this list is of people that the Gravedigger kidnapped. I'm sure of it . . . I wonder why he was interested in that?"

Slowly shaking his head, Harris felt that it was important to look at everything on the wall. "I don't know, but I'm starting to get creeped out . . . The guy was under house arrest but left when he wanted to and no one knew about it. He's listed murders here in the District and out of state . . . He was interested in the Gravedigger . . . Was he fangirling Taffet? I mean, was he planning to murder people or has he already done it. Why the interest in the Gravedigger? That worries me . . . I think I'm going to get Angela to help me . . . Our murder victim may have killed someone he shouldn't have or tried to anyway."

Booth felt that Harris might be correct. "If he was murdering people then maybe it's a good thing he's dead. He was obsessed with Bones and I really don't like that."

"No kidding." Harris pulled his phone from his jacket and made a call. Once he arranged for some FBI techs to come to the house, he placed the phone back in his pocket. "I'll stay until the techs get here. Once everything has been cataloged, I'm going to take this stuff to the Jeffersonian . . . Brodsky killed the Gravedigger and I want to know why Pelant was interested in her cases and her death . . . Do you think Brodsky killed Pelant?"

"Good question and I don't have an answer, at least not right now." Booth was worried about the Gravedigger connection and like Harris he was worried that Pelant may have been killing people with impunity. "Whoever killed him left him at a memorial for veterans and that probably has to mean something."

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